Himmel Torah

The kuntres on Hilchos Berochos was the Kol Arye's favorite, and the Rav of Samloya, who wrote the Maftechos to Kol Arye, explained why, saying that he wished to tell future generations what he had heard from the author himself. It was written in Uhjel, when the Kol Arye lived at the table of his father-in-law, Rav Moshe Leib Gintzler. At that time the Rav of Uhjel was Rav Yekusiel Yehuda Teitelbaum, the Yetev Lev, who had succeeded his grandfather, the Yismach Moshe. When the Kol Arye finished the kuntres, he gave it to the Yetev Lev to read, and the Yetev Lev left it in his private study, the room where the Yismach Moshe used to daven in his lifetime.

That night the Yismach Moshe appeared in a dream to Rav Gintzler. “I see that my advice to take Rav Avrohom Leib of Mad as your son-in-law was good advice,” he said. “I have just looked over his fine new kuntres.” He then repeated one of the chiddushim written in it.

In the morning Rav Gintzler went to his son-in-law, told him about the dream and repeated the chiddush, citing it in the Kol Arye's name. The Kol Arye was amazed. His father-in-law did not usually know what he was learning and never read his writings, so he could not have known anything about the kuntres beforehand. From then on the kuntres was precious to the Kol Arye.

Years later, the Kol Arye told this story in response to one told by the Sanzer Rav. The Sanzer Rav had recalled that the Pnei Yehoshua had a son, a great gaon and a Rav in Poland, who had sided with his own Rebbe, Rav Yehonoson Eibschitz, in the machlokes between the two. The son could repeat many chiddushim of his Rebbe but did not know any of his own father's. Then, one morning, the Pnei Yehoshua said to his wife that their son had died and ascended to the Heavenly Academy. “He is now in the mesivta d'rakiya,” he said. “Last night he appeared to me and asked me to teach him a pilpul to say over there. They had honored him to give a derosha and to say something from his father, and he was ashamed to admit that he did not know any. That is how I know he has gone to the world of truth.”

The Sanzer Rav said that the chiddush the Pnei Yehoshua taught his son appears in the Pnei Yehoshua on Bava Metzia, in one of two sugyos, one of them being motza shtar chov (Bava Metzia 12b), though no one knew which. The Sanzer Rav concluded, “I too have a Himmel Torah, that my chiddushim were said over in the mesivta d'rakiya.”

The Kol Arye answered, “Praise be to Hashem, I also have chiddushei Torah that are Himmel Torah,” and he told the story of his kuntres on Hilchos Berochos.